1. Field of the Invention
The embodiments of the invention generally relate to agents that monitor operations of virtual machines and, more specifically, to an apparatus and method that utilizes a single agent to monitor multiple virtual machines.
2. Description of the Related Art
Virtualization technology is being adopted by service providers at their data centers for the several benefits it provides, including IT optimization, flexible resource management, etc. Generally speaking, virtualization is a broad concept that is commonly associated with partitioning of real (physical) data processing resources; i.e., making a single data processing resource, such as a server, data storage device, operating system, or application, appears to function as multiple logical or virtual resources. The concept is broad enough to also include aggregation of real data processing resources; i.e., making multiple physical resources, such as servers or data storage devices, appear as a single logical resource.
There is a growing trend in this direction where services are hosted on a virtualized platform (i.e., where the server, storage, and network resources are virtualized, and applications are deployed on top these virtualized resources instead of dedicated physical resources). In such environments, it is important to monitor these virtual resources to ensure that services are running properly and to identify errors/problems in the early stages.